Why be formal

By Annabelle Mciver

LOOK into the sky above a large city and you are almost certain to see at least one aircraft skimming the edges of your field of vision. In London, it may be as many as five planes or more waiting for a landing spot at one of the city’s two main airports. With the number of air passengers in Britain expected to exceed 188 million a year by 2005, it is no surprise that the world’s major centres for air traffic control are rethinking procedures and redesigning their systems.

This was just what the Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority did in 1992 when it upgraded the London Area Terminal Control centre – and the efforts are now starting to pay off. The requirements for the new system were stringent&colon; the traffic managers who are in direct contact with pilots during take-off and landing need up to the second information on weather, airport status, arrivals, pending departures – and all at the press of a button. Most importantly, the data they see on their screens must be accurate.

With the lives of so many thousands of people at stake each day, the software underlying a system such as the one designed for the CAA must be utterly reliable. If the software in such a system – which is often referred to as being safety critical – crashes, then there is an increased chance of some of the planes crashing as they arrive or leave the controlled air space. Designing such software requires great care and attention to detail. So the CAA, along with Praxis, a British software company, chose to use …

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